Many software products today handle multiple media types. Some examples of different media types may include image files, graphics files, moving image files, movie files, word processing files, text files, web log (blog) files, voice recordings, music files, Portable Document Format (PDF) files, bitmap files, Joint Photographic Experts Gorup (JPEG) files, Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) files, JPEG Interchange format (JIF) files, recipe files, and the like. Many users prefer the use of images or graphic representation of files over the previous use of textual representation. Some examples of image based or graphic representation of media file may include thumbnails, tiles, or icons. Each representation may offer differing levels of information detail and size.
Applications are faced with the challenge of how to display a folder of these media file representations. For example, some applications divide the display window into two portions, panels, panes, or windows. The first portion displays a location of the media files and the second portion displays the media file representations in the selected location. In another example, hyper text markup language (HTML) 4.0 makes use of frames. Frames allow a web designer to divide the web screen into related sections. For example, one frame may contain a table of contents, a folder hierarchy, or a site map, and one or more additional frames may contain the content associated with the elements in the table of contents, the folder hierarchy, or the site map.
Many applications that use frames, or that divide a display screen, may preset the size of the sections. The display screen can be referred to by a plurality of names, some examples of which include display, screen, page, window, space, or any combination of them. The window sections may be referred to as frames, panes, portions, windows, panels, or other similar names. One example may be to arbitrarily preset the size of a left-side frame or panel displaying a table of contents to be the height of the display window and approximately ⅓ the width of the display window, and to preset the size of a right-side frame to be the height of the display window and approximately ⅔ the width of the display window to display the content selected in the left-side frame. However, this approach may leave a portion of display space unused. For example, the table of contents or folder hierarchy may not utilize the entire length of the panel or frame. That is, there may not be enough content in the table of contents, site map, or folder structure to consume the preset space of a panel or frame, leaving a portion of the frame unused. Further, as a user makes selections in an application, the table of contents, folder structure or site map may change reducing or increasing the space required. However, a panel with a preset size cannot adjust to these changing requirements and thus has to be pre-sized with enough space to accommodate the largest of content.
Thus, what is needed is a solution for displaying multiple panels, frames or window portions without the limitations of conventional techniques.